Friday, April 18, 2014

I guess these folks don't have any cows
by digby

So I haven 't heard any big outcry about the men with guns confiscating this property under forfeiture laws. It's the State of Texas not the Federal Government so perhaps that makes the difference. It's ok if Texas does it just not Washington. But it also strikes me as something that one might expect the Christian Right to see as an intrusion into religious liberty:

The Texas Department of Public Safety, which raided the Eldorado, Texas, ranch in April of 2008, said in a statement released on Thursday that the walled compound has been entered by law enforcement officers and “the residents have agreed to vacate the property.”
Jeffs was convicted of sexual assault in 2011.

The statement noted that the state on January 6 secured a forfeiture judgment from the 51st Judicial District Court. Efforts to seize the property were initiated in 2012 by the Attorney General’s Office.

“Law enforcement personnel are working with the occupants of the ranch to take all reasonable actions to assist with their departure of the property, to preserve the property, and to successfully execute the court order,” the DPS said.

The DPS didn’t say how many people were still living on the 1700-acre compound with a gleaming white temple building in the center, located about 200 miles west of Austin. At one point, Jeffs held sway over some 700 followers on the ranch, where he and other leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, took young girls to be their “spiritual brides.”

There are similar FLDS communities in Utah and Arizona.

Jeffs, 58, is serving a sentence of life plus 20 years in the Texas prison system. He was convicted of sexual assault relating to what his sect called “celestial marriages” to two underage girls at the religious compound.

Obviously, I hold no brief for this fundamentalist religious sect. (Liberals aren't usually big defenders of such institutions and I think most of the convenient claims of "religious liberty" are a right wing crock.) But I do find it interesting that none of those who are protesting legal forfeiture when it comes to cows says a peep when the cops come and kick this congregation off their land and seize their property. And since the man who perpetrated the crimes is in jail, wouldn't you expect the religious libertarians to defend the rest of them to stay on their land?

I understand why people would find it distasteful to defend these folks. But that's what principles are supposed to be all about.